Here’s a sentiment that, for me, sums up the United States pretty well: “Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct”.
That was the Supreme Court in 2003, striking down an “anti-sodomy” law in Texas. In a country designed to elevate the individual over the collective, you need good reason to criminalize private conduct. Gay people and anti-gay people have the right to think, talk and act as they please, provided they don’t harm others. God bless America!
Oddly, though, very few Americans see it that way. Supporters of religious liberty rarely champion gay rights, and supporters of gay rights can be scarily intolerant when it comes to the rights of people who don’t believe in gay marriage. Even the most footling, trivial issues get turned into culture wars, in which each side fulminates against the other’s imagined motives.
“You’re all a bunch of queer-bashers!”
“You won’t be happy until Christianity has been stamped out!”
And over what? I struggle to think of any meaningful change that will flow from Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Will gay couples be unable to buy wedding cake? I doubt it: It’s hardly as though the wedding industry is noted for being anti-gay. More to the point, what gay couple would want their wedding to be managed by people who disliked them?
It’s a curious thing, but political arguments are often at their most abusive when nothing much is at stake. Each side seems chiefly interested in flaunting its ethical superiority. You hear people saying, without irony, things like “don’t tolerate the intolerant,” and “I refuse to watch that TV station, it’s too prejudiced”.
Well, fair enough, whatever floats your boat. But surely there are better candidates for moral outrage at present. While America was convulsed in arguments about pizzerias, Islamist militants in Kenya were occupying a university, releasing the Muslim students and shooting the Christians. That, in case you were wondering, is what actual intolerance looks like.
At the same time, Iran was doing a deal intended to result in the eventual acceptance of its nuclear program. I couldn’t help but notice that the Americans keenest on boycotting Hoosiers who oppose same-sex weddings are generally keen on engaging with the ayatollahs who hang gay men from cranes. Then again, as I say, this isn’t really about gay rights — it’s about signalling that you’re a nice person with the correct opinions. It’s about being moralistic rather than moral.
Poor Mike Pence, who has always struck me as a fundamentally likeable and patriotic man, hasn’t played that game. But the Indiana governor is surely right to want liberty and tolerance to cut both ways. Think about it: The logic of his opponents’ position is that people should be forced against their will to participate in activities that they dislike — that, for example, a Muslim photographer who regarded same-sex weddings as sinful should nonetheless be obliged to work at them. This would represent not the abrogation of the First Amendment, but its precise reversal: Instead of free speech, there would be a form of compulsory speech, opinions which all were required to voice.
The oddest thing of all is that this row is happening at a time when the acceptance of homosexuality has, at long last, become general throughout the West. As Steven Pinker shows in his magnum opus, The Better Angels of Our Nature, being gay has never before carried such little stigma in America. There are plenty of places around the world where being suspected of homosexuality is physically dangerous. But the idea that only the full force of law is holding Hoosiers back from anti-gay segregation acts is too silly for words.
The change is all the more remarkable for having happened so quickly — rather like the sudden shift in attitudes toward smoking in public places. I still remember the sex talk our headmaster gave us as leavers when I was twelve: a much-anticipated, almost legendary 40-minute session. After some useful information about venereal diseases and the like, he told us: “I suppose I ought to say a thing about boys who are attracted to other boys. It’s unacceptable, and if anyone should try it on with you, kick them where it hurts”. He was, by any standard, a decent man; but, in 1984, that sort of opinion was quite normal.
Scroll forward some 30 years. My wife is explaining to our nine-year-old daughter that two female friends and their baby are coming to stay. Unless you are British, or have spent time around Brits, you can’t begin to imagine how awkwardly she was circling around the subject. “Darling, you know that mummies and daddies have babies. Well, sometimes there are mummies who, er, like other mummies and, er…”
Eventually, the nine-year-old interrupted in exasperation. “Mummy, are you trying to tell me that they’re gay?”
To have moved so far in one generation is extraordinary. Almost no one wants to go back to the days when gay people were forced into the shadows, let alone threatened with prosecution. The Indiana boycotters are out by three decades — or, rather more to the point, by 7,000 miles.
It’s sad to hear demands for gay people to be given peculiar legal protections — that is, to be treated differently. After all, their predecessors spent years in a heroic battle for the right to be treated the same. How gay people in Iran must wish for as much.
Dan Hannan is a British Conservative MEP.
